134 EPPING FOREST. 
he had once settled with the principal landowners 
having rights of common therein, it would be difficult, 
if not impossible, for any smaller Commoner to challenge 
him in the Law Courts, and to incur the enormous costs 
of a suit. The prize within the grasp of the Lords of 
Manors was most valuable. The Forest land when in- 
closed would be worth in many parts from £1,000 and 
upwards per acre. They reckoned upon gradually 
buying up the rights of the important Commoners, 
either in money or by allotments of the Forest, and 
then approving under the Statute of Merton, and on 
frightening the smaller Commoners, by arbitrary in- 
closure, against contesting their rights. For this pur- 
pose, then, it was all important for them to show that 
the Commoners of a particular Manor were confined to 
it alone, and had no rights over the whole of the Forest, 
or over the wastes of other Manors. 
The researches of Mr. Hunter into the ancient records 
led to the discovery that this view of the Forest was 
unsound, that instead of being a congeries of separate 
Manors, the Forest was one great waste, over which the 
Commoners of every one of the nineteen Manors had the 
right of turning out their cattle, without the obligation 
of confining them to their particular districts. The 
importance of this discovery could not be over-rated. 
It at once became clear that the arrangements, made for 
inclosure by the several Lords of Manors with their 
respective Commoners, were wholly invalid, and without 
effect upon the rights not only of the other Commoners of 
their own Manors, but of all the numerous Commoners in 
